Matsushita presented a technology at the International Symposium on Optical Memory last week that allows a two-sided optical disc to hold up to 100 GB of data. The technology uses violet lasers to store 50 GB per side, or up to two hours of high-definition programming.

Matsushita's development compares to the earlier development by Sony and Philips of a DVR-Blue test machine last year, which also uses a violet laser. Hitachi has also released an optical pickup capable of reading 100 GB discs.

Manufacturers are concerned with the use of a violet laser that may cause problems with backwards-compatibility with DVD, and the lasers themselves are far from standardized. The discs could offer re-writeable ability, and they achieve their 50 GB per side capacity with two 25 GB layers per side.

ROB'S OPINION
For the past 10 years people have been talking about a successor to the red lasers used in CD and DVD mechanisms. For whatever reason, it seems like the blue laser mechanisms have been very hard to develop, and now the companies are settling on a violet laser. Perhaps what would be more desirable is a more focused red laser development, just as DVD was to CD, but for another generation of optical media.

At the moment, it looks like technical hurdles and standardization are holding these technologies back. I don't think anyone wants a fiasco like we had with DVD hardware standards development, but what is more frightening is how the RIAA and MPAA will react to the new technology. A 100 GB optical disc will hold a lot of MP3 files and DivX-codec based movies. However, perhaps the MPAA is satisfied with DVD for now and will not even take part in the development of the next standard. That's wishful thinking on my part, I know.

Does anyone remember the days when exciting new optical and magneto-optical technologies would come out of the blue and increase the storage in ways that were meaningful enough to be worth buying–even if they were not a standard? I wouldn't mind going back to those days, if only to get some of this new technology out faster. I don't really need to wait for a stamp of approval from the RIAA and MPAA before I buy a new optical drive.

USER COMMENTS 71 comment(s)

Too Bad(12:43pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)Normally I would be excited about a disc like this that is a viable storage medium for HD-DVD but given how long DVD took to standardize due to the MPAA's and RIAA's involvement it's hard to be excited about a tech that must gain industry support before it can get to a standards board that will then argue with the RIAA and MPAA until the medium fits their requirements. Which mean this tech's about 6 years away. - by Berylium

Nice(12:44pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)That's what I'm talking about. It'd be nice to see CDRW discs that can hold 100 gig !!!!! 1 disc would be all you need for computer storage. Maybe this will lead the way for further DVD extras as well. Can't wait to see. - by GuRuGeEk

Anyways, I think that, unfortunately, that 100Gb disc will have to wait quite a while if they are serious about bringing it on the market. - by WiKiD

roygbiv(12:55pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)Red = long, Violet = shortI believe the shorter the wavelength lets you have a more 'defined' beam. I don't know why a red laser is easier to produce than a violet one. Maybe it has to due with the amount of energy needed to produce and the energy released by the shorter wavelength. I believe cutting lasers are UV.

Blue LEDs were only available 3-4 years ago and green LEDs only 8-9 years ago. - by JJ Brannon

the difference is….(12:58pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)the width of the actual photon wave itself. the narrower the wave, the closer you can put the tracks, hence the more you can hold. Personally I'd like to see them stick to mpeg-2 with these discs just so you could fit, what, 30-35 hours on a disc. Imagine, all episodes of star trek ever on a handful of discs. that'd be sweet.- by Cfour

The key difference in the LASERs is the wavelength and in turn the size of spot the make. In the visible portion of the spectrum, the blues are down around 400 nm while the reds are up around 700 nm.

The smaller the wavelenght the smaller the spot. Smaller spots mean more data in any given area.

Red diode LASERs are common and cheap … blues are relatively new and still quite expensive (relative to red). - by Oz

they should focus…(1:01pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)on smaller form factor disks and drives rather than just driving up the capacity of 5″ disks. How about a 3″ Pocket DVD disk with 1.25 GB on it? That's 300 MP3s in your pocket on a $0.50 disk. That would be sweet. - by spud boy

Mr Ziw*(1:01pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)Different colors of light have different wavelengths. To my understanding, Violet, therefore, has the smalles beam and can read the finest “pits” on the disk. My concern is that shrinking the “pits” will just make these disks more prone to error, won't it? Afterall, daily scratches won't shrink with the “pits.” A small scratch on a CD will play fine, but jumble the picture on a DVD.

Maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill, maybe they will enhance the players and the disks to make them more reliable. It would be great if they did.

I would personally recommend giving each disk its own plastic case (like a floppy) that is required for reading. - by Steven

Okay(1:12pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)I get the picture now. And yep, I agree Steven, they need to put caddies or something on discs. The only reason I can think of why CD's and DVD's didn't come with a protective cover from the start is cost and someone realized that by letting disks get scratched up it'd create a replacement market. - by Ziwiwiwiwiwiwiwiwiwi

More Quantum Mechanics(1:14pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)

The minimum spot size you can focus a laser to is of order the wavelength if you are limited by diffraction rather than bad optics, so shorter wavelengths = smaller pit sizes and higher data density. A UV laser is something like 1/4 the wavelength of a near IR laser.

The down side is that the pump power requirement for a laser scales as frequency ^3 or ^4 (frequency is proportional to 1/wavelength) depending on the broadening mechanisms. There is no fix for this, its built into the physics of how lasers work. This means you need approx 2^8 = 256 x more power for a UV laser to get the thing to work.

Another problem which is that the bandgap in GaAlAs used in LED manufacture is of order 1 eV = IR operation by default. Mucking about with doping can let you manipulate the bandgap and bigger bandgap = shorter wavelength photons. However there is a limit to how far you can push this and I think that UV LED lasers have some really bizare level structures.

Just to add the final blow, lots of solid state materials get better and better at absorbing light at shorter wavelength. UV does not propagate well through glass or plastic for instance and you need to use quartz optics.

Still, UV leds are possible, my last take on this was that they didnt work for too long at room temp though, but the march of technological progress continues.- by R A Smith

Spud Boy, don't forget…(1:23pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)that a smaller disk would dramatically increase the battery life of the player. That is a great idea.

As Bill Maher said:Any way to cut energy consumption is a way to ween America off the dope (oil) given to us by those in the dealers in the Middle East. - by Steven

form factor(1:26pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)let's hope they follow the minidisc lead and put these in mechanically closed cartridges to eliminate scratches. So, 100G on a 5″ let's use the minidisc size and even if it is 20G it will be sweet.

- by sean

fmd rom(1:50pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)for close to 2 years now, I've been reading about fmd rom. basically, a simple red laser can be used to read up to hundreds of data layers on a single transparent protein-infused 5 1/4 disk. It should be cheap, backwards compatible, and contain up to terabytes of information. I read that the problem was that the industry wasn't interested in those sorts of capacities, but now I'm wondering if it's got more to do with politics.

ever hopeful - by Kurt.

FMD Rom(2:36pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)Check it out at The FMD Disc will look like a CD, but transparent. The disc will have multiple layers, each one holding around 4GB. The company is beginning limited production in January 2002. So far they have succesfully tested a 24GB HDTV disc. And the discs use red, not the expensive blue or violet lasers. - by Balberith

Kurt(2:36pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)I have read the same thing. There where some standardization problems with that technology.

I did like the layering concept. With a blue light laser they could store a libraries worth of data.

We all live at the whim of the development lab. - by OldGeek

FMD Disks(3:18pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)Didn't these have a short shelf-life? The dyes desublimated or something? - by JJ Brannon

BIG WAVE(3:23pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)Regardless of the type (light, sound, water yes we can all run home and verify this in our bath tubs), wave are only good at detecting things down to about the size of a single wave length. As stated earlier violet has a shorter wave lenth -> smaller thing representing data -> more of then per area.

Of coarse when we are really trying to see small thing we don't use light waves anymore…we use probabiltiy waves of electrons….much much much smaller.

Will someone please e-mail me when the quantum disk is available and let me know how you keep the subatomic particles where they are meant to be…especially during reads.

- by BATH TUB PYHSICS

fmdrom(3:23pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)Well I think that in order for FMD-ROM to succeed now it will have to be the biggest thing out there. I know I won't buy one unless nothing else comes close to it. - by chip@geek.com

Bill Maher(3:30pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)is an idiot. - by SB

FMD Discs(4:09pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)JJ Brannon: I heard that C3D has a number of dyes they can use for the FMD discs. Some only last for a few weeks, while others last over 20 years. They're considering using the short-term ones for movie rentals, etc. - by Balberith

i was about to mention FMD myself..(4:28pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)… it seems a bit more versatile than this 'DVD' tech, but it's all good. - by God™

doh..(4:30pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)…one more great thing about the FMD tech…

Discs aren't necessary for it to work (the media doesn't have to spin). This will help with smart cards, etc… - by God™

Bill Maher(4:36pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)is not an idiot. Bill Maher made ill-timed and insensitive comments, but he's hardly an idiot. In fact, some comedians tend to have an amazingly inventive perspective on the world. I point you to George Carlin, for example.

Bill Maher…(5:09pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)calls his show “politically incorrect” yet I find him and most of his guests to be among the most politically correct, bleeding heart liberals around. That's why I don't like him. - by spud boy

Umm(5:43pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)perhaps they could combine the FMD technology with UV lasers… 100TB per disc. Wouldn't that make more sense? - by yeah™

spud boy, don't make yourself sound like an idiot(5:52pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)Bill Maher, while not my hero, represents many viewpoints on his show. Do you think that Bleeding Hearts shouldn't be allowed to speak in public? In fact, he always has a token idiot conservative on every show. I don't side with the far left or the far right, but I appreciate the chance to hear their viewpoints so I can make my own decisions. Bill leans a little to the left, but he he fairly represents a diverse body of opinions on his show. - by Steven

Wierd storage(6:37pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)I continue to gain interest in anti-matter technology, being able to manifest negavite atomic particals would generate massive, uncomprehendable energetic discharges and could be implemented into storage.This would be fun indeed

I still like his show, though, even if Bill is a political idiot. In entertainment terms, he is a genius. - by Nut Case

Get back to basics(8:29pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)Kill what frightens you.

I do not believe you are afraid of what RIAA and MPAA do or will do or have done. Frightned? Go kill them. Dont shake in your boots all over the internet.

Frightned? - by Getsomenads

Re:Bill Maher(8:31pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)Is a washed up actor that never was. He is lucky he has the show which is on so late that it can't be rated. I think he would win his time slot if the George Foreman Grill informercial did not come on at the same time. He never goes up against the heavy weight on the issues and the people on the show are not experts at the topics he brings up.

I will not will not watch his show.I will not watch it in a box.I will not watch it with a fox.……….. - by Rax

smaller discs, higher density(8:48pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)i would have to agree with “spud boy”. i think that smaller discs with higher densities are a much better choice than a big 5″ disc with a hundred gigs on it. if the density was the same, you could hold like 10 or 15 gigs on a 3″ disc! hell, the computer im using right now only has a 10 gig HD… and ive got like two thousand mp3's on it! get a player to read one of those little 3″ discs… equip it with an anti-skip mechanism similiar to “Sony G-Shock”… and violla! the mp3 player of the future.. - by DUECE

re: RAX-I-am(8:49pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)How did this get from DVD's and lasers to Bill Maher? I've barely have a clue who he is, but it seems he must be in the same class as Rosie O'Donnell. Now George Foreman, he's cool. - by Ziwiwiwiwiwiwiwiwiwi

color of light…(9:22pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)is determined by the wavelength of the light reflected/omitted, which is determined by the inter-electron or inter-photon distance. narrower wavelength=narrower data channel to be read. narrower data channel=more times the disc has to spin before it fills up. the more it spins, the longer the groove runs. longer groove=longer data. oh, and ultra-violet light has the narrowest wavelenght of all light…so don't be surprised if that laser comes next. - by Bill

Smaller Disks Make Sense(11:39pm EST Wed Oct 24 2001)I agree that a smaller disk may be a better choice as a replacement for the current movie DVD market, as no matter how many “extras” you include, you're never going to fill up all 100GB. There are a few options however, such as increasing the image quality of the image, like HDTV, thus taking up more space and necessitating a higher density disk. But with the increasing popularity of higher compression algorithms like DivX (at least online for now), the densities we have today could hold a lot more. Combine the violet laser disk system with a high quality, high compression rate video format, and suddenly the video rental and sales industry sees a smaller form factor optical disk as a better alternative to the present 5″ design. I wouldn't expect to see such a transition occuring until 5 years from now at the absolute earliest… with 10 years being a more realistic. Formats in the computing industry may be subject to more frequent changes and updates, but the consumer product industry is less tollerable of having to change formats every few years… think of how long the VHS tape lasted before DVD began making an appearance.

I know I may have repeated many things that have been said before on this page, but I felt it necessary to list them all together in order to make my point. - by The Trivial Psychic

I like it(3:20am EST Thu Oct 25 2001)It would be nice to put all my home Videos on one or two disk. Let the egg heads figure out how to use the lasers and then give the devices to us. - by Rax

What are you going to do with all that storage?(6:58am EST Thu Oct 25 2001)I just bought a new puter (2ghz gasp!) I only got a 40 gig hd and I've been ripping cds since I got it. I've installed everything I own and can download. What are you going to need a 100 gig disk or the theoretical 100terab disk for? I don't see a need for that until we get this VR thing down pat.

Some Possible Uses for HUGE disks:Maybe I could download my brain onto this disk.

They could make the library of congress available by mail.

You could order Amazon.com

I like all the episodes of Star Trek idea…and all the spinoffs

You could could combine the FMD, Violet light and an old fashioned juke box (the one with the stack of records) and have a really huge hard drive.

Monster.com could sell all the resumes it has on a disk.

Dvd's would be coasters

HOW ABOUT!!!They give everyone a T1 or greater before doing this disk thing. Or they could perfect the Internet 2 project

or something - by ZexSuik

Transparent Discs(9:03am EST Thu Oct 25 2001)Many months ago ugeek reported on a transparent disk that could hold 100GB of data. What happened to that? Or are you talking about the same technology in this article? - by Illuminati

hey (10:43am EST Thu Oct 25 2001)hey dudes what about crystal storage tech i read the magizine called “Wired” that some scientist in alab are working ecthing multible layers of data into a multifaced crystal (ie for every facing n the crstal there are thousands of layers of data stored under each facing) of course this tech is a bout 20 years out from now but it looks promising for setting up massive servers that are smaller than lap tops but the process is very expensive they have to form the crystals in a vacumed out room and the laser for it is freaking huge and seems to use a green laser as far as i could tell from the pictures. does any one else have any more info on this? - by Denver Starkey

What do with Storage?(11:08am EST Thu Oct 25 2001)To the question of what one would do with all that storage space. Maybe we can't see it now but there will be plenty to fill it with once the space is there. Once the capacity is there it will be filled. My friend has 80G on two drives and filled it up. I'm sure once better storage comes out it will be filled too. - by Denver Hoover

Multi-photon discs(11:56am EST Thu Oct 25 2001)I've read about using multi-photon absorption (two or more lower energy photons being used in place of a single higher energy photon) as a way around messing with blue laser diodes. This would provide a cheaper laser source, one already in use. However, with the longer wavelength, you would have a larger focal spot size not to mention the significantly lower absorption, and it takes a heck of a lot of power from a cw laser to do this (although less average power with a pulsed laser). The main advantage would be the fact that absorption depends on the square of the intensity (or cube for three-photon processes), which means you only get transitions in a small football-shaped volume at the focus and not throughout the cone of the focused light. This provides an opportunity for a many-layered storage disc. And since lower energy photons can usually penetrate more easily than higher energy ones, there are definite possibilities for using this layered effect. I've seen articles regarding this and have done research using multi-photon absorption, but it still appears to be in its infancy. - by Laserman

Blue LED's(12:25pm EST Thu Oct 25 2001)Its hard to make blue lasers for the same reason why blue LED's are a new thing. It took them a long time to figure out how to do it. It has something to do with the wave lengths as some of you mentioned. The wave is smaller and more focused so it can read smaller grooves in the disks. Hope they make it DVD and CD backword compatable. Or it wont sell very well. - by evildead

Blue LEDs….(3:48pm EST Thu Oct 25 2001)I seem to remember something about elaborate chemical componund crystals that are behind LEDs. The compound to create a Blue led was the most difficult to synthesize.

Has anyone heard that once Blue LEDs are out, we'll have Red, Green, and Blue LED's and then we can make LED video (at a fraction of the cost and the energy to run them)? Just curious if this has happened yet… - by REaliTy

Blue LEDs – 'nother quantum lesson(9:47am EST Fri Oct 26 2001)Gallium nitride is one material that has been used for blue LEDs. But it is important to mention that higher frequency laser diodes have more than just material processing to worry about. It becomes more difficult to generate a shorter wavelength (higher frequency) laser because of spontaneous emission. Stimulated emission and spontaneous emission compete with each other to see which will be the means by which a molecule will relax from its excited state. We know that Stimulated Emission (the SE in LASER) is good for lasers. But the Einstein A Coefficient, which determines the rate of spontaneous emission, scales with frequency^3. This means that roughly doubling the frquency (going from red/NIR laser diode to blue laser diodes) would mean that you would be losing excited molecules 8 times faster with the blue laser. This is why you don't see very many x-ray lasers. Their frequency is too high for the molecules to remain in the excited state long enough to undergo stimulated emission. R A Smith mentioned this phenomenon earlier in this post. - by Laserman

smallest wavelength of light(1:50am EST Thu Nov 01 2001)Just wanna say that UV is not the region of smallest light wavelengths. That would be gamma rays (sometimes called “hard x-rays”)

Good description, Laserman :) - by The Chemist

Blue and White LEDs(2:27pm EST Thu Nov 01 2001)One of the problems with manufacturing the blue emitting LED was that the doping materials were corrosive to each other, so that had to be worked out. Then the blues require higher forward voltage and current which produces destructive heat, they have a much shorter lifetime compared to red LEDs. Once these and other problems were worked out RGB outdoor signage became possible. This is a big market which drives technology.A new development in LED technology is the OLED (organic LED). Instead of being produced in vacuum chambers on silicon wafers (just like integrated circuits). The OLED can be produced by a screen printing type method (way cost effective). Because LED technology emits light you will see an evolution from LCD displays, which modulate a source of backlight (way inefficient).Oh yea, White LEDs are currently available from many sources. They have only been around for about one year and quality is generally poor compared to legacy technologies. They start with a blue LED (high energy output)then coat the die with a phosphor. The light energy excites the phosphor to emit a kind of white light. Only now we are seeing some types of whitish LED backlight, signage, and keyring flashlights. - by papco

LED's(8:36am EST Fri Nov 02 2001)Green LED's have been around commercially since the late 70's, blue since the early 90's and white for at least 2 years. I worked with the green and blue LED's when I was with Panasonic and know the time frame to be true. I started to research white LED's about 1 to 1 1/2 years ago for a project. As for the LED TV display, there is an inherent problem with persistance. This is how long it takes the display to stop emitting light after the signal is removed. Sony has been working on the problem for at least 8 years that I know of and they haven't been able to solve it. The end result is that the picture will smear and the edges of objects will appear to be blurred. The greater the speed of the moving object, the greater the blurring effect. This persistance effect isn't all bad, it is the same principle that makes our current TV displays usable. TV uses interlaced scan lines so it activates the first frame and while it is still glowing the second field is energized. The end result is the picture as we know it. Hope this helps. - by The Resident Nerd

Cost of Discs(9:52pm EST Wed Nov 14 2001)Remembering back about 5 years ago, CD-R's were about $10 each… (as opposed to todays $0.35), CD-RW when first released were about dowble that, DVD-R's Are Double Again… Whats the cost going to be for these 100GB Discs when released? $100 each?… for the gumby home user, this price is gonna be too high… and how long is it gonna take to drop? 20 years?… BUH! - by Kahanamoku

“Those Crystal Drives”(12:13am EST Sun Nov 18 2001)The article you read in “Wired” most likely referred to Holographic Data Storage (HDS). Though information on the technology has been very difficult to find on the internet, I have come across what seems to be the future of the technology in the past few months. HDS has been able to keep ahead of magnetic data storage ever so slightly that the industry does not want to make the move to it simply because it would cost too much. The lasers have been developped small enough that they can conform to hard drive sizes seen today, yet they are too expensive to manufacture on a mass scale at this point. If Fluorescent Data Storage and FDM don't pick up as planned, then HDS is an alternative. Holographic memory is more likely to make the scene than HDS because of its enormous data transfer potential of multi-gigabits to terabits of data per second. - by DownPour

How fast ?(4:34am EST Fri Dec 07 2001)Just wondering how long it is going to take to write 100GB on one of those disks… It already takes an hour to burn a DVD… - by Al

cost of disks again.(4:09pm EST Wed Feb 20 2002)Kahanamoku brought up the point that everyday consumers aren't goint to pay 100$ fo a 100 gigabyte disk, well that's only 1$ per gig. Presently one would pay $0.50 for a 700 meg disk. Currently you pay $25 (plus tax)for a 35 gigabyte spindle that consists of 50 disks. Multiplied by 3 that's roughly $75 for the 100 gigabytes of storage on !!150!! disks that you could obtain on 1 single disk for an extra cost of $25. If paying an extra $25 means that I can cut the hassle by 99% then hell I'm sold!!!! On top of that I'm sure if things took such a direction the disks would come in cartridges to ensure you're data is safe from damage. This damage safety measurement could easily be used for cd/dvd disks but do you really want to add 300% of the bulk to you're cd collection. It's all about getting larger data capacities on smaller mediums for ease of use. Like putting you're movie collection on you're hard drive instead of having 400 VHS tapes to stuff in the cupboards! - by Jezwald Grakowski

Material design considerations(2:20pm EST Sat Jul 12 2003)It is my understanding that there are significant length scale considerations of the groove sizes going from red to blue ray. Does this mean that current blue ray tecnology available can read all the DVD's that we have currently on the market. Correct me if I am wrong but I think NOT!!!! - by Yolanda

No, the development of new cost-effective hard-coating technologies has made the cartridge obsolete. Blu-ray will instead rely on hard-coating for protection, which when applied will make the discs even more resistant to scratches and fingerprints than todays DVDs, while still preserving the same look and feel. The adoption of hard-coating will also allow manufacturers to downsize players/drives and lower their overall media production costs.[/quote]

good news for the priceing of this new format.

BD wavelength is 405nm and the numerical aparture (NA) is 0.85, HD-DVD's wavelength is the same as Blu-ray 405nm but the numerical aparture is 0.65 mwaning HD-DVD has les room for more layers to be added. A regular DVD's depth to the first layer is 0.6mm HD-DVD is the same at 0.6mm, Blu-ray is 0.1mm depth before reaching the first layer, meaning more layers can be added increasing capacity. HD-DVD is useing violet diode which cant write as much info to each layer, Blu-ray uses blue diode which can write more denser info per layer, this is why HD-DVD only fits 15gig per layer Blu-ray fits 25gig per layer.

I hope this explains things to those who were confused

- by NoNamer

need help(11:06pm EST Sat Oct 22 2005)i need to know what the emissions of high energy rays and particalls is called what? plz help me ty. - by ben brewer

homework(3:47pm EST Wed Nov 09 2005)does any one no how to do covalent bondings? the question is h+h - by james